Find duplicate photos without installing anything
Point this page at a folder. It reads your photos straight from disk, compares every image pixel by pixel and tells you exactly how alike they are. You decide what stays.
What makes PhotoDupes different: you install nothing
Every duplicate photo finder on the market is a program you have to download, install and often pay for. This one is not. It is a web page that works on your files using your own computer's power.
Nothing to download
No installer, no adware, no toolbars that appear out of nowhere. You open the page and it is already working.
Your photos never travel
The folder is read from your disk and the analysis runs on your machine. Disconnect from the internet and see for yourself: it keeps working.
No permanent permissions
You grant access to one folder, and that permission dies when you close the tab. Nothing stays installed watching your disk.
Works on any machine
Windows, Mac or Linux, it makes no difference. If the browser opens, the tool runs. There is no version to update.
How it decides two photos are the same
This is where almost every tool gets it wrong, so it is worth explaining.
First: is it the same file?
Every image gets a SHA-256 of its contents. Two files with the same result are the same file, whatever they are called and wherever they sit. No interpretation involved: they match at 100%.
Then: is it the same photo in different files?
The hard case is the same picture after a WhatsApp round trip, a resize or a re-compression. Different bytes, same photo. It is solved in two stages:
- Fast shortlisting. A perceptual hash proposes candidate pairs. It is quick but imprecise, so it never decides anything on its own: it only points at who is worth a closer look.
- Real comparison. Each candidate is reduced to a 32×32 grayscale grid and the correlation between the two is measured. That number, shown as a percentage, is what you see on screen. Because it is normalised by contrast, the measure ignores brightness and compression changes but collapses the moment the content differs.
Two guards back it up: images with different aspect ratios are never grouped, because a crop is not a duplicate; and images without enough detail — a nearly blank screenshot, a flat background — are only grouped if they are literally the same file, because comparing them visually means nothing.
That is why a folder full of screenshots, which a naive algorithm would happily lump together, stays correctly separated here: they resemble each other in shape, not in content, and the real comparison knows the difference.
Nothing gets deleted
The tool never calls a delete operation. Everything you select is moved into a subfolder called _duplicates inside the folder you scanned. You open it, look through it, and delete it yourself when you are sure. If something went wrong, dragging the files back takes seconds.
In each group the copy with the most pixels is pre-selected to be kept, and the rest are marked to move. Every checkbox is yours to change.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to install anything?
No, and that is the whole point of this tool. It runs inside the browser you already have. No program is downloaded, nothing is left on your machine, and there is no version to update.
What exactly does the percentage mean?
It is how closely two images match when compared pixel by pixel on a 32×32 grid. 100% with the "same file" label means identical byte for byte. 99% means the same photo at another compression or size. Below the threshold you choose, the tool simply does not group them.
What if it groups photos that are not the same?
Set the sensitivity to "Strict". Groups are recalculated instantly without re-reading the folder. And remember the percentage is visible on every file: if you see a 94% on something that does not belong, uncheck it.
Are my photos uploaded anywhere?
No. The browser reads the folder from your disk and all the work happens on your machine. Disconnect from the internet after the page loads and the scan still finishes.
Which browsers get the full version?
Desktop Chrome, Edge, Brave and Opera can read and write the folder you choose. Firefox and Safari can read it, so you still get the full report and the CSV export, but you move the files yourself.
How many photos can it handle?
Tens of thousands. The analysis is spread across several parallel workers and thumbnails load only as you scroll to them.
Does it work with RAW files or HEIC?
HEIC works in browsers that can decode it. RAW files are compared byte for byte but not visually, since browsers cannot open most RAW formats.